CSC Poland 1: Week 3 in Lublin

Over this past weekend marked the longest I have been away from my family… missing these guys!!

Week 3

We made it back to Lublin from Krakow around 10pm Sunday night, and it was back to work Monday am. Several more meetings with stakeholders scheduled this week, and beginning to prepare the deliverable we will hand over to our client at the end of the project.

We still managed to get out and enjoy a few dinners during the week:

Pictured at right are the best potato pancakes I have ever tasted.

We ate dinner in a room that was tucked away underground. Teammate Simon is pictured by the doorway we had to "duck under".

And who invited this guy pictured to the right?

Thursday brought our team’s first big milestone… reviewing the initial draft of the deliverable with our client. The goal was review a draft that we considered 80% complete. We met with 3 Departments (Our main client and two others) We had done some pre-screening with them, but some of the information they would be seeing for the first time. This was our chance to demonstrate what we had accomplished so far and show them most of what would be our deliverable.

Delivering the observations can be the trickiest part of a consultant’s job; it’s like being invited into someone’s house and asked to provide a list of what needs to be improved. A client site is much like an owner’s house; you typically do not know which paint choices, art selections, or furniture styles are the favorites. So making a recommendation to replace or even get rid of something might not be received well. And as consultants, even doing pro bono work, the client is expecting we will make observations. Though it can be a tricky message to both deliver to a client and for the client to receive, the meeting went well. All 3 departments that we met with are very open to change and appeared to be nodding in agreement with most of our observations.

On many levels we met the goal of the day, however our team, made up of a group of high achievers, was feeling there was more than 20% of the work still left to do… it was shaping up to be a busy weekend.

Dinner on Thursday evening was at Trybunalska, a team favorite. I ordered beef cheeks.

{Hey Ethan, I am missing doing our picks together for the NCAA basketball tournament which starts tonight; I emailed Mom the link to the Sweet 16 Teams; I know you are cheering on Kentucky this year (so is President Obama) I want to see Wisconsin and Kentucky in the final, but for obvious reasons I’ll be cheering on the Badgers - miss you buddy!}

Friday morning we met with our client to discuss and plan for the meeting with the Mayor next week.

On Friday afternoon, the team took a break to look at the eclipse. One of my team mates remembered the science project from elementary school where you put a small hole in one piece of paper (facing the sun) while holding the second piece of paper behind. You are able to view the eclipse on the second piece of paper.

We had lunch Friday at Umea, a vegan restaurant.

The biggest, non-meatiest burger ever.

Interesting graffiti outside the restaurant.

We stopped into a music store on the way back for one of the guys. While we waited, Teammate Calixto started jamming with his recently acquired talent.

Friday after work we had our most memorable Turkish Bath experience. For anyone who doesn’t know, a Turkish bath is what we call a “steam room” in the States. Up to this point, when we had gone to the Turkish Bath, it was usually only people from our team. This being Friday night brought in the first of the weekend crowd to the hotel and spa. As teammate Simon (Canada) and I

Picture on the wall inside the Turkish Bath

approached the room, we ran into teammate Patricio (Argentina), who shared his story about a female guest he sat close to in the room, only wearing a towel. Two minutes after he entered the room, another male guest entered the room and sat between Patricio and the woman, and shortly after sitting down, removed his towel. We had heard rumors that some preferred to take a Turkish bath in the nude, and now we had the experience to go with the rumor. And then, while Simon and I were enjoying our Turkish Bath, in walks two couples, the women wearing only towels, and the men, well....lets just say there were no towels for them to drop.

Friday night ended up being boys night out. Dinner was at the Irish Pub.

Pictured at right is the salmon pasta dish I ordered. (this was so good I think I had this at least 3 times while in Lublin)

The guys having a good time.

A new favorite beer was discovered this night too. Zwiec Bock (pronounced Jiv-itz Bock).

Pictured here is the typical after dinner ritual of settling the bill. It usually begins with Teammate Calixto (Mexico) opening the bill and saying, "the total is two thousand, five hundred ... ZL" when really the bill is only around 350 ZL with tip.

Next in line is teammate Samuel (Singapore) who took on role as the Group accountant. Samuel calculated the totals, including tip, and then collected the money from all contributors. We typically collected more than we needed to settle the bill, so Samuel took it upon himself to establish the "beer fund" and kept track of the extra ZLs. Toward the end of the trip, the beer fund was cashed in.